


Desert+Legend

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016), Robin Hood (2018)
Genre: And Mac and Jack are still in the sandbox, Gen, Modern AU, Robin is an MI6 sniper, and Little John is his local contact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 16:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17943047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: “I’ll tell you what happened,” Jack mutters, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Your informant handed us over to these guys.” He had a bad feeling about this op from the beginning. He knew working with MI6 was never gonna end well.“I’ve been working with ‘Little John’ for months,” Robin insists. “He wouldn’t do that.”“Well, then I’d like some other explanation for why you, me, and Mac ended up staring down the barrels of twenty terrorists’ guns while he’s nowhere to be seen.” Jack glances at Mac, who looks like he’s still unconscious. If anything happens to that kid, Jack's going to personally hunt down whoever’s responsible, if he has to come back from the grave to do it.





	Desert+Legend

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, my other WIPs are screaming...but I just rewatched Robin Hood and because I love AUs I started thinking about how I could do a modern AU for the movie, and then realized the Crusades would put Robin and Little John in roughly the same area as the Sandbox for Mac and Jack...
> 
> I really do apologize for anyone who, unlike me, isn't in both fandoms and thus might be kind of confused...

AFGHANISTAN

2012

“Hey, Carl’s Jr, you comin’?” Jack asks. “I know you’re the slowest EOD tech in the damn Sandbox, but could you at least walk a little faster?”

Mac knows Jack’s just messing with him, or he’d argue that getting blown up tends to leave a few bruises.  _ I was lucky whoever built that bomb botched it.  _ The device was one of the kind that have been popping up recently, designed specifically to take out the EOD techs arriving to disarm them.  _ Someone who knows our training is using it against us. _

Mac’s still not ready to put this new mystery bombmaker on the same level as the Ghost, the devices aren’t elaborate enough, and they’re not nearly as carefully designed, but he’ll admit they’re worrying him more than the average IEDs he comes across.  _ How sad is your life when bombs start to become just part of the daily routine, like a backed up sink for a plumber?  _

He’s glad they’re not making a run today; being bent over for hours would be hell on his back. Medical cleared him to go back to field work, but he thinks that’s because he deliberately understated the pain levels by about three degrees.  _ They need as many EOD techs on duty as they can. _ But he and Jack got called up this morning to HQ for a special op. They’ve been told nothing more.

Jack’s been grumbling all morning. “Special op, my ass,” he muttered when he and Mac started walking. “They’re probably gonna put us on a protection detail for some politician who wants to butter up the troops and get the conservative vote or a bunch of hippie do-gooder kids who think getting themselves blown up is gonna earn them brownie points.” Mac just shakes his head and listens. He doesn’t have the energy to argue with Jack, and he agrees about the politicians with ulterior motives.  _ But honestly, I’m not too much different than the kids over here with humanitarian causes.  _ Mac’s just not a civilian. 

The truth is, he and Jack do get picked a lot for doing bomb sweeps for dignitaries or aid teams.  _ I guess that’s what happens when you get a reputation for being the best at what you do. _

But when he steps into the HQ behind Jack, it’s not a Washington bureaucrat or a Peace Corps leader waiting to talk to them. It’s a guy probably just a few years older than Mac, in desert tac gear with a custom sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. Mac can tell in a minute that’s not standard US issue, if he had his guess he’d say this is British special forces weaponry of some kind. 

The colonel steps up beside the newcomer. “Agent Loxley, this is Specialist MacGyver and his overwatch, Sergeant Dalton.”

“Agent Robin Loxley, MI6.” The man extends a hand, and Mac notes the strong Welsh accent. 

“You were a sniper with British Special Forces a few years ago, right?” Jack asks. “Word was goin’ around that you were the best shot they’d ever seen.” 

“I don’t know that I’d say that myself,” Robin replies with a smile.

“You’re lucky I was outta the Deltas by then or I’d have smashed your record without even trying,” Jack chuckles. 

Mac shakes his head at his overwatch’s posturing.  _ Come on, Jack, there’s always going to be someone better. Someone better than you, someone better than me. _ He just hopes they end up on the same side as those people. Because the day Mac runs across a bomb maker better than him is the day he doesn’t come home. 

* * *

Jack knows he’s probably ruffling some feathers, but his natural reaction to a challenger is to challenge back. Like the established bulls’ reaction to putting a new one in the stock pens back at the ranch.  _ Rob Loxley’s a living legend.  _ Jack would never actually admit the guy’s better than him, but he’s heard the stories of theoretically impossible shots.  _ Shanghai, ‘08. Berlin, ‘10. Paraguay, ‘11 _ . This is the guy you call when you need a miracle.

_ Sure, I can take two guys with one bullet, but that’s just a matter of waiting for them to line up for me.  _ He knows it’s more than that, and that he’s smarter than he’ll give himself credit for (especially that time Mac was trying to do mental math to calculate yardage and Jack rattled it off to within half an inch accuracy), but this guy is beyond that, even. There’s something absolutely intuitive, like he can feel the bullet, like it’s just another part of his body. As good as Jack is, he doesn’t think he can understand it completely. 

_ But that does beg the question, why does he need us? _

“What’s the op?” Mac asks, and Jack can tell the kid’s trying to keep him and Rob from squaring off.  _ I’m not that big an idiot.  _ Jack knows Mac’s probably remembering their first meeting, and the fight that went along with it.  _ I was just in a real bad place then. Thanks to the kid, I’ve got good reason to have turned that around.  _ Mac’s the only reason Jack saw to stick around here. Loyalty and duty to country have started to wear thin these past few years, after all Jack’s done already.  _ I was ready to go home, to leave the fight to someone else. And then they dropped a lost puppy on my doorstep.  _ Jack couldn’t live with himself if he left and something happened to the kid.  _ Maybe loyalty to a cause can be beaten down, but loyalty to a person... _ Daltons don’t give up on the people they adopt. 

Rob glances at both of them. “I’m sure you’ve heard of General Sahid.” Jack nods. He’s a high-ranking al Qaeda member. So far every attack traced to his involvement has been on European soil, but the man himself is rumored to direct operations from a hidden base, somewhere here in the the middle east. Jack was part of an op tasked with finding him when he was still CIA. But their intel was old, and the raid on a Syrian compound left them with nothing aside from some old documents and a small, disorganized band of terrorists determined to continue the fight without their leader. 

“Until a few years ago, Sahid was almost untouchable. But with the increased military action, and the capture of more and more ranking al Qaeda members, he started to lose support, and he began accepting the backing of some of his international supporters. Which is how we were finally able to track him.” Rob spreads out a few documents. “We managed to trace some of the funding back to a wealthy London executive, Keith Notting,” Rob explains. “One of our underground informants, a hacker we’ve code-named ‘Maid Marion’, sent us a file six months ago with the proof that Notting was funding Sahid’s terror attacks; Notting makes most of his money in weapons development, and I’m sure this is simply good business to him.” Jack doesn’t miss the smile on the young man’s face as he talks about the hacker.  _ Probably she’s a bit more than an informant. _ Jack wonders if Riley knows about this girl, ‘Marion’ sounds like the British version of his ex’s kid. 

“With that information we were able to trace the money to a dummy account, and eventually our intelligence team was able to turn the information into a location.” He leans toward the map spread on a table and taps a small black dot in the mountains north of their current location. Jack’s heard that’s a hotspot lately. A team went in to pull out a crashed test pilot and barely made it back alive, and now it’s a non-actionable zone, technically. “I’ve been in-country for two months, learning everything I can about Sahid’s operation and trying to find a way in. His compound is heavily guarded, but thanks to a local source, I know the ways in and out of it that are least likely to be dangerous. I’m planning to infiltrate the compound and capture Sahid, alive if possible, and bring him in for interrogation.”

“Where do we come into all this, again?” Jack asks. So far, this doesn’t sound like anything that couldn’t be handled by any covert ops team.

“The problem is, Sahid’s known for employing bomb makers, both for his attacks and to defend his compound. There’s no telling what kind of traps he’ll have set for anyone trying to get into his base undetected. Which is why I need EOD backup.” 

“So you came to the US Army?”

“Heard you had the best of the best.” Jack’s totally willing to stop contesting Loxley’s sniper skills if the guy’s willing to acknowledge that Carl’s Jr. is the best EOD tech in the Sandbox. “Op’s set for tomorrow night, 1900. We’ll be flown in part of the way, but we’ll have to hike in to avoid raising suspicion, and it’s a good three hours’ trip through the mountains.” Jack nods. They’ll need to be well rested. “We have reliable information that Sahid is actually at the compound, so if we strike now we may be able to capture him as well as take out his base of operation. The objective of the team I’m leading is to secure Sahid before a larger strike team takes the compound in the morning. He’s escaped two other raids, we don’t want to take a chance on losing him again.” 

“We’ll be ready and waiting.” Jack gives the man’s hand another firm shake as they leave. And if Rob can tell that Jack’s testing his grip and arm strength, he doesn’t mention it.

* * *

Mac’s done a few joint missions before. Getting tasked to team up with another country’s operators isn’t new. But something this big, with such a small scale team, is a surprise. Normally, joint ops have a fairly large personnel complement. But when Mac and Jack show up to the airfield, where the helicopter that will be taking them as far as they can is waiting, only Robin is there, with one other person, one Mac doesn’t recognize. He’s dressed like plenty of the locals Mac sees, and there’s a ragged blue cloth tied around his neck. Mac sees a scrap of something the same color tucked in one of the pockets of Rob’s tactical gear.

Robin steps up to greet them and introduce the man with him. “My local informant and guide, code name ‘Little John’.” The man offers them his left hand, Mac can see that the other is missing. 

All of them step into the chopper. Mac sits across from Jack, and Rob across from “Little John”. Mac shudders as the rotors’ whine reaches flight pitch and the chopper begins to lift off. No matter how many times they fly, it never gets easier. Even planes make him nervous, but for some reason the helicopters are worse. Maybe because they’re so noisy. Or maybe because he’s watched more than one get shot out of the sky. 

“Nervous?” Robin, beside him, must be picking up on the tension in Mac’s body. He thinks he might actually be vibrating. 

“I don’t like heights,” Mac admits. He clenches and unclenches his fists against his legs.  _ Breathe, just breathe. Once we land you’ll be fine. _ There’s a reason Mac didn’t join the air force. 

“It is not natural to be so far above the ground, like a bird, American.” John says quietly. Mac notices that the man’s good hand is wrapped tightly in the ends of his scarf. “But we do what must be done.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Jack says. He’s checking his gun over, the way he always does. “Hopefully tomorrow morning, we’ll have ourselves a terrorist in custody, and it’ll all be worth it.” 

“We cannot let him escape,” John says, and Mac flinches at the bitter pain in his voice. “He cannot be allowed to do what he has done any longer.” 

“He won’t. Not if we have anything to say about it,” Jack says. “Where he’s going, he won’t be seeing the light of day again.”

John shakes his head. “Sahid’s men used my village as a base. They did what they pleased and if we tried to fight back, they slaughtered innocent people. They took the women and the girls, we could do nothing.” He shakes his head. “They took my wife from me. And when my son tried to run to her, because he was afraid, they shot him in the street, in front of us both. He was seven years old, he was only a child. He did not understand.” He looks down at the scarf, and now Mac can see that the ragged, stained edges are actually bullet holes and bloodstains. “And when I attacked the man who shot him, they cut off the hand I hit him with. But they left me alive. To see my family destroyed, to watch my home turned to ashes.” There’s a dark fire in John’s eyes that makes Mac glad he’s not the target of the man’s anger. “He must pay for what he did to my family.” 

* * *

When they land, Robin steps away for a few minutes with the sat phone, ostensibly to update his superiors on mission progress. But that call takes a minute at most, and when it’s over he dials a number he knows by heart.

It’s still daylight in England, and when Marion answers he can tell she’s hard at work, there’s music in the background. She always listens to something when she’s hacking. 

“Rob? What’s happened?” She sounds worried. She always does when he calls her like this. 

“I’m about to go in for the raid. I’ll call you when it’s over.”

“Be safe.” He knows she’s got more reason to worry about him this time than most.  _ It was her intel that led us here. If something happens to me, she’ll feel responsible.  _ He chuckles as he agrees and hangs up.  _ At this point, what goes through my head on mission is mostly ‘stay alive or Marion will bring you back from the dead just so she can kill you again’.  _

He blames being lost in thought half a world away for why he doesn’t hear the footsteps until whoever it is is right behind him. He spins around quickly to see the EOD specialist standing there. 

“Who’d you call?” MacGyver asks. Robin looks up guiltily. “That was Marion, wasn’t it?”

“MI6 doesn’t know I can contact her any time I want to. They’d probably order me to bring her in if they did.” Rob doesn’t look too upset to be blatantly disregarding his agency’s rules. “She may be an informant, but she’s still a black hat hacker.” 

She might be on the opposite side of the law the way the intelligence community sees it, but Robin’s met very few people he can sense an equal passion for justice in. Marion is one of them. He’s beginning to think Angus is another. 

He’s tried to convince Marion to voluntarily switch sides; he’s sure someone with her skills could get her record wiped in exchange for her cooperation. But she insists she’ll never become a puppet of the whim of a government, and he can respect that.  _ It just makes what we have a lot harder. _ But she’s worth every secret meeting, every safe house he has to abandon afterward.  _ I still don’t even know her real name.  _

“How’d you meet?”

Robin smiles at the memory.“I was undercover, posing as a weapons dealer. Marion broke into the warehouse to try to sabotage the shipment.” He shrugs. “I told her the truth and let her leave. She’s been funneling me intel ever since.” He leaves off the part about secretly helping her stay one step ahead of the law. He thinks it’s a fair trade. “You got a girl back home?”

“Not really.” Angus shrugs. “I wasn’t ready.” There’s a pain in his voice that Robin recognizes. A fear of getting attached because people leave. Because you end up abandoned by everyone you counted on to be there for you. Robin can spot someone who’s lost a parent just as fast as he can clock a target.  _ When you’ve been there, you know it. _

“Fair. You don’t even look old enough to be dating anyway.”

“I’m twenty-two,” MacGyver says, defensively. He probably hears that a lot. Robin can’t blame him. He’s twenty-seven and still gets asked to show identification in American bars.  _ But even twenty-two seems pretty young. _

“Planning on getting university paid for?” He knows a lot of American kids decide to sign on to cover the expense of getting a degree; something it took him a long time to grasp.  _ For me, it was either that or almost certainly ending up in prison before thirty. _ That’s just how it is in his neighborhood. You go to war, or break the law.  _ When you’re eighteen and stealing cars to pay for your drunk stepdad’s habits, you don’t have much of a choice. _

“Already went. Two years at MIT.” Angus says it like it’s no big deal. “Figured I could do more good over here where I could actually save lives.” 

“Not too many people think like that. You’re a good man, MacGyver.” Rob’s seen people go to war for a lot reasons.  _ Some do it for a cause. Some do it because they have to. Some do it because it’s a legal way to kill.  _ Not too many show up saying they’re here to save lives. But MacGyver’s record proves that he’s done just that.  _ Over a hundred IEDs defused. Kid’s a living legend, but he doesn’t even seem to know it. _

“You can call me Mac.” 

“You two done chatting?” Jack calls out. “Let’s get moving, kids.” Robin shakes his head and they start off into the dark. 

* * *

Mac’s impressed with John’s knowledge of the area. The man leads them up seemingly impossible trails, over terrain Mac can barely imagine goats navigating. The mountains are treacherous at best, in daylight. In the darkness, with only the hazy moonlight, there are confusing shadows and hidden dangers.

They’re winding their way up a narrow path along a steep edge when Mac stumbles. The ground is slick with loose stone, and he’s put all his weight on a patch of it. He leans toward the hill, hoping to catch himself, but his foot slips and he’s teetering dangerously close to the edge. 

Jack catches his arm. “Now’s not the time to get klutzy, Carl’s Jr.” Mac swallows. That’s a long way down. He’s not sure it would kill him, but there are a lot of large, jagged rocks on the way down. It wouldn’t be pretty, or fun. 

His legs and lungs are burning by the time they reach the edge of a ridge where they can see down into Sahid’s compound. It’s smaller than Mac was expecting, but there’s no doubt what it is. The high wall, topped with razor wire, and the guards pacing the perimeter kind of give it away.

“What’s the plan for getting inside?” Jack asks. 

“One of the trucks?” Mac can see vehicles coming and going on the road regularly.  _ The best way to get into a place is to use a legitimate means. _

“No good,” John says. “Trucks never enter the main compound. Sahid knows the risks. He makes them unload outside.”

Any other way in requires them to cross that dead space between the hills and the wall. There’s only open sand. Mac was hoping the trucks were viable, since the road passes through the hills in a narrow, rocky pass.  _ We could have set up a great ambush there. _

“We will go over the wall. There, on the far side.” John points to a section. “Sahid likes to keep civilians to do his work. They were left in that part of the village. It will be easier to stay hidden there.”

“It’s the best we’re going to get.” Robin nods. They creep through the ring of hills surrounding the compound until they’re facing the section of wall John described. But between them and it is over two hundred yards of open ground. Mac doesn’t like these odds. 

“This whole area is probably mined.”  _ Pena always said if something looks too easy, it is. _ There’s a clear approach to the wall on this side, semi-decent cover from the rocks, and it’s seemingly unguarded. There’s nothing large enough to conceal any sentry posts, either.  _ Definitely the kind of space best protected with some kind of booby trap.  _

“Watch your step.” Mac breaks off some branches from a scrubby bush and hands them to Jack and Rob and John. “If you have a knife, get it out and use it to gently- _ gently _ check the ground in front of you. If you hear it hit metal, sweep off the whole surface of the mine and then stick a twig next to it.”

He goes first, hopefully if there is something he’ll be the one to find it. But there’s no guarantee that someone else won’t move slightly out of the path and run across one too.

He’s used up about half his own branch when he sees a new problem. “Tripwire,” Mac whispers. He glances at the narrow silvery line across his vision; something about it is eerily familiar. Like the wire he cut on that last IED that instead of disarming it set off the secondary trigger. 

This is one of the kind of bombs Mac’s run across lately. And after the last one, he knows exactly what not to do.  _ Often, the key to dealing with tripwires is just to avoid them. But I’d bet there’s some kind of pressure plate just on the other side. Step over, trigger the failsafe.  _ Once again, it looks too simple. He’ll need to disarm the whole bomb for them to get past. 

Mac follows the line of the wire to where it disappears in the sand. It takes agonizing minutes to reach the bomb itself, since he has to sweep the ground for inset mines here too. 

When he uncovers the bomb itself, he pries off the top and works quickly to disconnect the triggers. The bomb itself is simplistic, almost clumsy. It’s an odd contrast to the thought that went into making it difficult to work around. Mac files the information away for later, he has no idea what they’re dealing with.

Past the tripwire, it appears that the ground is no longer mined. Still, Mac doesn’t want to take chances, and they work their way in carefully. 

The wall itself is only a minor inconvenience. Once they’ve made certain there are no patrols coming their way, and Mac wonders with an odd gratefulness why they’ve seen no one come through here, it’s just a matter of lifting Mac up so he can cut the wire with his knife and push it aside, and then sliding down the inside to anchor the rope Rob brought so they can all get over. 

The compound is dark, and Mac can smell goats and smoke and a dull acrid odor from exhaust fumes. He and the others pick their way between the houses, John in the lead, trying to avoid piles of trash and hanging clotheslines. Ahead, Mac can see lit buildings, probably the military portion of the compound. A patrol walks past, the man turning at the edge of the building and pacing back the other way. 

_ It’s ALL too easy. _ Mac has the sudden horrifying realization that they’re walking into a trap.  _ They let us in. This guy has men patrolling every inch of the camp. But no one patrolled that area while we were coming; that’s not right.  _ Sahid’s men let them dig their own graves...or at least trap themselves behind a wall. 

He whispers to get Jack’s attention, he’s learned the hard way that physically startling him when Jack is in Delta infiltration mode will mean risking getting incapacitated. “Jack? Jack, they let us get in.” 

“Whadda you mean?”

Mac figures the best way to explain is to quote movies, it’s what Jack does practically every mission. “Like Star Wars. The first one. Well, the first old one. When Darth Vader lets the Millenium Falcon fly away so he can track them.” 

There’s clear awareness in Jack’s eyes; he’s not even arguing.  _ He sensed it too _ . “So you’re sayin’ we’re Han Solo?”

“Kind of.” 

Jack leans toward Rob, still whispering. “The mission’s compromised. We have to get out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mac’s sure. So I am.” Mac’s still shocked that Jack has such implicit trust in him.  _ If anyone told me this was how it was going to go when I first met him, I would have thought they were crazy. _

The four of them retreat slowly back toward the wall.  _ Hopefully they were counting on us trying to hit the compound itself, and bottlenecking us there. _ But then he stops short. There’s movement between them and the wall.  _ We’re surrounded. They’re going to sweep the whole compound and push us to the center.  _

“You got a way of gettin’ us outta here?”

“Think so.” Mac glances toward one of the abandoned firepits. If he borrows a couple of Jack’s bullets, and there’s still some embers in that pit...He leans down to brush away the ash, and then there’s a crunch of footsteps from the other direction and the telltale clicking of guns. At least two

Mac swallows the sudden dryness in his throat. The last time he was trapped like this, Jack shot the men who’d caught him. But this time, he’s pretty sure Jack is as trapped as he is. 

He clenches a fist around a handful of ash. If he can create a distraction, maybe they stand half a chance of getting away. And then he hears shouting, and the second patrol arrives, more guns aimed down at him. Mac stands up slowly, raising his hands.  _ Well, this isn’t looking too good. _

* * *

SAHID’S COMPOUND

NOT HOW THEY WERE PLANNING TO GET INSIDE

Jack knows he should have trusted the bad feeling he had about this. He can hear, beside him, Rob and Mac breathing shakily, and the sound of the rope as their hands are tied. Their informant is nowhere to be seen, he seems to have melted into the shadows in the town. 

_ Damn it.  _ This wouldn’t be the first time Jack’s seen a local asset turn on a team, but he really thought they could trust that guy.  _ He really sold us on the sob story. Guess he wanted to convince us there was no way he’d ever work with Sahid.  _

The men haul them into a line, and begin pushing them toward the compound. Mac, in front, stumbles over something in the way, and instinctively catches himself against one of their captors. The man apparently interprets it as aggression, because faster than Jack can see, he lifts his gun and cracks the kid over the head with the stock. Mac tumbles to the ground, limp. 

“Don’t touch him!” Jack shouts, and he’s rewarded with his own guard slamming him in the cheek with his gun. He can taste copper on his tongue, and he thinks they might actually have broken a tooth. One of the men picks him up bodily, slinging Mac’s arm over his shoulder and pulling him along, and they go on. Jack focuses on the fact that he can see Mac’s shoulders rising and falling, he’s still breathing. 

They’re pushed into the light surrounding the largest building, and dragged through the door into a dim, chilly, hallway. One of the men opens a heavy steel door, and all three of them are pulled inside, slammed down into rickety metal chairs, and then their feet are pulled backward and tied to their hands. Jack’s body aches in protest at the uncomfortable position, and he knows it will only get worse. 

The door is locked behind them, and they’re left to the darkness. 

Jack’s been in more than one hole like this, and it’s never pleasant. He glances around as his eyes adjust to the dark. Mac’s helmet, like Jack’s, is gone, and the kid’s longer-than-regulation, sandy hair looks too dark.  _ I hope it’s sweat, but probably not.  _

“I’m sorry,” Rob whispers. “This is my fault. I don’t know what happened out there.” 

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Jack mutters, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Your informant handed us over to these guys.” He had a bad feeling about this op from the beginning.  _ I knew working with MI6 was never gonna end well.  _

“I’ve been working with ‘Little John’ for months,” Robin insists. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, then I’d like some other explanation for why you, me, and Mac ended up staring down the barrels of twenty terrorists’ guns while he’s nowhere to be seen.” Jack glances at Mac, who looks like he’s still unconscious.  _ If anything happens to that kid, I’m going to personally hunt down whoever’s responsible, if I have to come back from the grave to do it. _

And then the door opens, and Jack flinches at the sight of a bearded, thin face he’s only ever seen in sketches on briefing packets.  _ General Sahid himself. _

“Well, well, gentlemen, I am honored. Robin Loxley himself. And Angus MacGyver. Your reputations precede you. It’s not often I have visitors, especially such distinguished ones.” He smiles. 

“Might have something to do with the fact that you’ve got mines for doorbells,” Jack deadpans. “And you know, your welcoming committee wasn’t very nice. I think I’d have to give this a one out of five for bad guy accommodations. The chairs are a nice touch, but…”

There’s a click, and Jack feels the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against his forehead, and looks up into cold black eyes. The man’s grin is evil. “The next time you open your mouth, unless it is to tell me everything about why you are here, I will shoot you, and make an example of you for your friends. Those two are more valuable to me alive. For now. There’s a sizeable contract on Agent Loxley’s public death, and I plan on collecting on it. And your blond boy’s an easy payday on the dark web.” 

Jack snarls. 

“I would hold my tongue if I were you. If you want to keep it in your head. You, need I remind you, are the one I stand to lose the least by killing.”

“Fine by me,” Jack snaps. “Because you’ll hurt them over my dead body.”

“You struck me as the self-sacrificing sort. But I have broken dozens of men like you. It is only a matter of knowing the right…” Jack almost doesn’t see the knife the man whips out until he buries it in Rob’s thigh, “pressure points.” 

Rob groans against clenched teeth.  _ That’s gotta hurt like a bitch. _ Jack’s been tortured more times than he’d care to admit, and sometimes the oldest methods really are the most effective.  _ There’s nothing like a stab wound for lasting pain.  _ Some of Jack’s still bother him even now. 

Sahid twists the knife, and this time Rob does scream. 

“You already know we’re here for you, scumbag. What else could you want to know?” Jack snaps. 

“I want to know what you know about me. About my plans.” The man yanks the knife out, and then buries it in Rob’s left shoulder. Jack flinches. A little lower, and that could easily have been his heart or lung. 

Jack glances at Robin, and he realizes in that second that there is something more. Something that he and Mac weren’t told.  _ Need to know can be a killer. _

Sahid smirks at Robin, then turns to Jack. “You don’t seem to eager to stop your friend’s pain. I would imagine you have not worked with him long. But the little EOD tech, you must be his overwatch.” 

Jack flinches when the first punch cuts across Mac’s face. There’s an involuntary yelp, quickly suppressed. The next few hits cut across the kid’s ribs, and Mac gasps for breath, panting when the man finally lets up. But Mac hasn’t lost any of his foolhardy sarcasm.

“Thought...you’d be a little more careful...if you wanted me for my pretty face,” he pants out, spitting blood from what’s looking to be a painfully bitten lip onto the floor. 

“Bruises heal. But there are other methods that are less...visible.” The man’s smile is too thin, too cunning. “I would be happy to prove it.” He walks out, slamming the door.

“Aw Mac,” Jack mutters, “did you have to mouth off to him?”

“Got him out of the room,” Mac mutters. Now that there’s silence, instead of the man’s pacing, Jack can hear a faint sawing sound. “I just have to get through the last strand of this rope. Chair back has a rough spot.” 

“And what if he’d have just punched you again, and knocked you out or something?” Jack asks.

“Then it would have been time to think of something else.”

“Is he always this optimistic?” Rob asks, his voice tight with pain. 

“Yeah, he kinda is.” Jack shakes his head. 

And then the door opens. Mac visibly flinches.  _ He didn’t have enough time. _ Of course this is when the kid’s crazy plans decide not to work. Sahid is back, and Jack recognizes what he has with him.  _ Oh hell no. Don’t do that to my kid. _ Jack’s been waterboarded before, and despite his extensive interrogation resistance training, it’s still one of the most terrifying tortures.  _ There’s nothing you can do to fight it.  _

He wants to yell at this man, to scream at him to hurt him instead of Mac. But he knows that’s only going to make this worse. The man spreads a filthy cloth over Mac’s face and lifts a pail of water. Jack can see the kid shivering, he knows what’s coming, and he’s scared. 

“They don’t know anything!” Rob shouts. 

“Perhaps you would care to tell me what  _ you _ know, then?” The man drives a fist into Mac’s stomach and then begins to empty the bucket over the cloth. Jack can only watch in horror as the kid’s chest heaves, struggling for a breath that’s not going to come. 

It feels like an eternity before it’s over. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Mac. And when Sahid finally rips the cloth away, the kid doesn’t move. No desperate gasp for air, no response at all. “Mac? Mac!” He can’t tell if the kid’s breathing. 

Sahid leans in, looks at Mac’s face, and then drives a fist into his stomach. Mac lurches, coughs and spits out a mouthful of water. Jack feels like he’s the one who’s finally able to breathe again. 

“I suggest you think about whether you want this to happen again,” Sahid says, and then walks out, closing the door behind him. 

In the darkness, all Jack can hear is their own labored breathing. He cringes at the wet sound of Mac’s.  _ Kid’s gonna be down with pneumonia, the way that sounds.  _

He hears Rob shift and then make a soft grunt of pain when he jars his wounds. Jack wonders what secret the man’s holding onto, what Sahid is trying to beat out of them. He figures it’s worth asking. 

“What does he want?” Jack whispers. 

Rob’s voice is barely a shadow of itself. “To know if we know about the attack he has planned in London. In three days.”

_ No wonder we were on the clock.  _

* * *

The door opens. Robin wonders if it’s the men coming to split them up, to take him away for execution and Mac for...whatever they plan to do to him. He’s worked ops taking down trafficking rings, he sees all too many people like Mac who become victims.  _ It will be my fault. If I’ve condemned him to that life, then maybe I deserve to die. _

A large shape fills the doorway, and then the metal closes with a screech of hinges. “Good to see you still alive, English.” 

“John!” Robin can’t begin to explain how relieved he is.  _ I was sure he’d never turn us in, but Dalton had a good point.  _ But that means if John didn’t give away their plans, someone else with inside information did. One of the soldiers at the base is a traitor. 

John makes quick work of the ropes binding their hands and feet, and once he’s free, Rob stands up carefully. His leg and shoulder are screaming with pain, but he can move. It’s not as bad as Syria, that time his own men shot him in the chest.  _ The agent who did was new, jumpy. I didn’t blame him. But it hurt like hell. _

John returns to check him over, shaking his head at the wounds and tearing off pieces of the headscarf he must have stolen to disguise himself to stop the worst of the bleeding. It looks like Dalton is taking care of MacGyver with the same concern. 

Mac is shivering, still coughing, and Robin can hear water in his lungs. But the kid’s already pushing himself to his feet. He’s tough. Robin’s always seen tough and smart as the flip sides of a coin.  _ People thought because I was a kid who grew up rough on the streets that I’d never be anything more than the muscle. I proved them all wrong.  _ He’s pretty sure MacGyver had the opposite problem. 

“We need to go,” John says, as he finishes knotting a makeshift bandage. “They will realize soon that guards are missing.” Robin wonders how many men John took out to get to them. 

“Thank you. For coming back for us.” John risked everything. He could have gotten away, made it to safety. But he chose not to. 

“Sahid took away my family once. He will not do it again. I would die first.” The calm, matter-of-fact way he says it stuns Robin.  _ When did I become his family? _

They step out into the hallway, where Robin sees the three men who brought them in, and must have been watching the cell, lying on the ground. He’s impressed.  _ John’s a lot more than I would ever have expected.  _ Sahid’s men are well trained, to take out three of them, and possibly more, requires plenty of skill. 

Robin grabs a gun off one of the fallen guards. It looks like US Army issue, probably taken off a soldier they killed. He tosses it to Dalton. He’s about to grab another of them when he sees a familiar black strap, with an arrowhead insignia, over the shoulder of the third guard.  _ They handed my rifle off to a grunt? _ He feels a little insulted on his weapon’s behalf. 

He starts to hand the third gun to Mac, but Dalton pushes his hand down. “Kid doesn’t really like guns. Just trust me.” Robin glances at where Mac is quickly picking the lock of what looks like a supply room. When the door swings open, he grins. 

_ What is he doing? _ Mac’s sorting through a handful of containers of cleaning products, and he grabs two or three, pouring things into a pail. “Come on, let’s go, Mac.” Mac grabs one more canister, and picks up his pail, and follows them. 

They stop at the door. Robin can hear shouts from outside. “I think we need to find another way out. Guess they noticed your work, John.” 

“Or we could do exactly what they don’t expect and use this door.” Mac holds up the pail of cleaners. “You might want to stay behind that corner, this is going to get loud.” 

“What…”

“Just trust him, he’s got this.” Dalton tugs on his sleeve. “And when he says to get back, you wanna listen, believe me.” 

The three of them crouch in the hallway, and less than a minute later, there’s an explosion that feels like it shakes the whole building. 

“What in the bloody hell was that?” Robin asks, ears ringing from the blast. 

“Mac doing his thing,” Dalton grins. “Kid’s awful good at keepin’ stuff from blowing up when he has to, but he’s pretty damn good at makin’ it go kaboom too.”

“Good thing he’s on our side.” Robin remembers the almost gleeful look that pushed out the pain when Mac saw the contents of that storeroom.  _ I’d hate to come up against a guy who can probably make a bomb out of shoestrings and chewing gum. _

They run for the now missing door; it looks like the makeshift bomb did even better than Robin could have expected. The guards in the courtyard are lying on the ground, stunned or dead.  _ We might actually make it _ . And then there’s a shout from the courtyard, and Robin looks toward it to see Sahid standing in the shadows, one hand on a knife, the other wrapped around MacGyver’s throat. 

* * *

Jack can’t help but grin at Rob’s reaction to seeing Mac’s work for the first time.  _ And a pretty impressive display, at that. _ It’s not too often Mac gets the chance to do one of his more destructive tricks, but it seems like he has plenty of fun with them. Jack’s never seen anyone more obsessed with setting random things on fire, and he has two middle-school-aged nephews.

He runs for the door, smiling at the level of damage Mac’s left in his wake, and glad he doesn’t see the kid’s body somewhere in the rubble.  _ Yeah, I was worried about him. Couldn’t be great to be that close to the blast.  _

He glances out into the yard and stops dead in his tracks.  _ Damnit. _ Sahid is there, still on his feet, and worse yet, he’s got Mac. The man has a knife to Mac’s throat. Jack doesn’t dare even breathe. 

“Put down your guns, and step back. Or I kill him where he stands.” 

Jack doesn’t move. He judges the distance to the man, the shot he’ll need to make to miss Mac and take this man out cleanly, before he can do more damage. 

And then there’s a muffled crack from behind him, and Sahid slumps down, red blossoming in his forehead. Mac is dragged down with him, and Jack runs over to the kid, pulling the knife away from his neck. There’s a raw graze left behind, but the blood trickling down toward his collar is from his ear, probably from the explosion. 

Mac clings to him a little more than necessarily tightly as Jack helps him to his feet. “Thanks, Jack.”

“That wasn’t me, kiddo.” Jack’s never pulled the trigger. Behind him, Rob lowers his rifle. 

There’s more shouting from other areas of the compound,  _ so much for a stealth mission. _ John motions to them to follow him, and leads them into a winding maze of buildings, then up a flight of steps to a flat roof of a large one. 

They lay down on the roof just as the patrol rushes past below. For the moment, they’re safe. But they can’t stay here forever. And they’re not going to be moving quickly. John’s been practically dragging Rob since they made it out of the courtyard.  _ Otherwise I might suggest we make a run for it and take our chances.  _

“Mac, any ideas?”

Mac’s glancing down at the pickup truck parked below them, and then out at the empty waste surrounding the compound. 

“We need a distraction. If we can set off one of their perimeter explosives, they’ll think we ran that way and didn’t notice it until it was too late.” 

“And how do you suggest we do that without getting killed?”

“We have to snap the tripwire long-distance.” That’s the only exposed part of the bomb. “There’s no explosives between the tripwire bombs and the camp, we know that now. I’m going to sneak up there and turn my knife into a time-delay fuse.”  _ I’m not even gonna ask. One, because it’s gonna be some physics nerd mumbo-jumbo, and two, because it ain’t happenin’. _

“Kid, there is a hundred yards of nothin’ between us and that wire. You’re gonna get yourself shot before you get halfway there.” 

“What choice do we have?” Mac asks. Jack can think of one. It’s not too much better, but it doesn’t involve his kid going out there in the middle of a wasteland where people are hunting him. 

“We could shoot it.” Jack turns to look at Rob. “Loxley, as much as I hate to admit it, you’ve got the young eyes.” 

“Not going to do us any good now. I’m starting to feel that blood loss.” Rob sighs. “I won’t be able to keep my rifle steady, and everything gets blurry when I try to focus. I’m lucky to still be on my feet. Making a shot like that’s out of the question.” 

Jack nods and lifts his own gun off his shoulder, but stops when Rob pushes his own across the roof toward him. 

“Here, I’ve got a pretty powerful scope on this one. You might be able to see the wire without needing your glasses.” 

“You’re starting to sound like Mac.”  _ I guess I don’t deserve to complain about Mac calling me ‘old man’ when I refer to him as ‘kid’ every three seconds.  _

Jack pulls off the scope. He doesn’t want to try and make a shot like that with a gun he’s never used before. The army issue rifle is familiar, at least. Not the best thing ever made for a job like this, but Jack’s learned a thing or two about improvising from Mac.  _ When you don’t have what you need, you make do with what you’ve got.  _

This is going to have to be the best shot Jack’s ever made. 

The moon glints on the thin wire, and Jack steadies it in the center of his scope.  _ Damn that’s a small target. _ And the second he shoots, he gives away their location if he misses.  _ We literally only get one shot at this. _

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, and squeezes the trigger. 

The explosion is a plume of light against the blackness. Jack hears the yelling moving in that direction. 

Rushing down the steps, Mac hotwiring the pickup, and Jack smashing them through the compound gate is all a blur. He thinks one of the gate guards got in a lucky shot, his shoulder feels like there’s a burn across it, and the sleeve feels warm and wet. But they’re out, and the truck appears to have enough gas to get them to their exfil site. If the gauge isn’t broken.  _ Maybe one thing will go right for us today.  _

The quiet desert night is a relief after the yelling and explosions they’ve left behind. The silence in the truck is only broken by Mac’s choked breathing, the hum and sputter of the old engine, a soft groan every once in a while from Rob, who’s laid across the back seat, and John humming some kind of soft Arabic lullaby. 

Jack glances at the kid in the passenger seat. “You did good back there.”

“We still got caught.” Mac shrugs.  _ He always sees what went wrong. Never what went right. _ Jack wonders just how much of a world-class jerk his old man had to be, to mess the kid up like that.  _ Probably some kinda perfectionist who demanded his son be just as good.  And probably punished him if he failed.  _

“Thanks for getting us out of there.” Mac bends over, hacking up more water. 

“Don’t look at me, kid, this was technically your idea.”  _ And it involved blowing something up and stealing a vehicle. Why am I not surprised? _

* * *

Mac’s been hotwiring cars since he was seven. And one thing he loves about the vehicles here is that they’re usually all still pretty old. New cars have failsafes to try and prevent hotwiring. But in the sandbox, almost everything that isn’t military is at least ten years old.

The pickup is battered and dusty, with a rolled up magazine and some local newspapers scattered across the seats. The windshield is cracked and one headlight is smashed out. It doesn’t take him long to jimmy the door lock with a knife and find the right wires under the dash. Hearing the engine turn over is probably the best sound he’s heard all night. 

“Thirteen seconds. Nice.” Mac’s momentarily confused, he recognizes the Welsh voice as Rob’s. “Pretty good time from door unlock to ignition.”  _ Guess he’s pretty good at it too. _ It sounds like he’s speaking from experience.  _ No wonder he likes that hacker. Sounds like he didn’t play for the legal side his whole life either. _

The ride to exfil is pretty quiet. Mac can’t hear too well anyway, he’s pretty sure he was too close to his cleaner bomb and his left eardrum paid for it. He’ll worry about that later, at least they’re all still alive. And he’s not being sold to the highest bidder somewhere on the dark web.  _ That almost scared me more than the waterboarding. _ Torture, he knows he might run into, and he also knows that eventually they’d kill him. But being sold off... _ I could have spent the rest of my life in the hands of a monster. _

It’s only when they’re on the exfil chopper, and the medical team has finished an initial triage of their injuries, that Rob speaks up. 

“The son of a bitch who sold us out had better pray I don’t find him before the Army does.” There’s the slight waver in his voice Mac’s learned comes when pain medication starts to kick in. 

“My money’s on Guy Gisburne,” Jack says. “Never did trust him. Shady fella.” 

“It makes sense,” Mac whispers, despite Jack trying to get him to stay quiet and rest. “Gisburne’s an EOD overwatch. He knows just enough about the bombs to know what a tech is going to do to disarm them, but he’s not skilled at actually building them. That’s why there’ve been so many duds.” 

“How do you plan to prove it?” Rob asks, then groans as John puts more pressure on his leg wound. They’re not going to be able to do much about that one until they reach the field hospital, other than controlling the bleeding. 

“Haven’t figured that out yet,” Mac chuckles, then winces. Trying to smile with split lips isn’t a good idea. 

“Would this help?” Jack asks, holding up a phone. “Grabbed this off Sahid before we left. Thought it might come in handy, and maybe you wouldn’t decide to wreck our sat phone again.” Mac sighs.  _ One time, I break the phone one time… _ “If he was in contact with our guys, that should show up on here somewhere, right?”

“It should.” Rob nods.

“So once we get back to base, we just need to find the message that told him someone’s coming, and trace it back to the sender.”

Mac settles a little closer to Jack’s side. He’s tired, and he thinks he can feel a fever starting, but all he wants right now is to rest, and he feels safe here with Jack.  _ He’s not going to let anyone hurt me. _

* * *

FIELD HOSPITAL

NOT EVEN CLOSE TO JACK’S FIRST TIME

Jack insisted on being allowed to stay with Mac, and he’s glad he did. As expected, Mac has a pretty nasty case of pneumonia. He’s on some strong antibiotics, but the coughing spells are rough on ribs that are already bruised from the beating Sahid doled out. Mac refused any medication for the pain, but Jack can tell every coughing spasm is agony, so he’s taken to sitting with Mac when they happen, rubbing his back and holding him close until he rides out the shuddering waves of pain. 

He’s sitting there on the edge of the bed, running his fingers through the kid’s fever-wet hair and ignoring the ache in his stitched-up shoulder, when he sees the base commander come through the door. 

“Sorry to disturb you, men, but I’ve been ordered to take a debrief in person.”

“Go away, come back never,” Rob mumbles from the other bed in the room. They’ve had to do surgery on his leg, and from what Jack can hear they’re optimistic that he’ll regain pretty much full mobility with some physical therapy. 

They’re lucky. At least, that’s what Jack keeps telling himself. Because he sure doesn’t feel like good luck is only needing to get his shoulder stitched up while his kid has a fever that spiked to 103 within an hour of them reaching the hospital. 

When this is all over, he’s taking Mac home, and he’s gonna wrap the kid in twelve layers of bubble wrap. Not that Mac would ever let him. The kid’s too self-sacrificing to care about protecting himself. Jack has no doubt that within six months after their tours are over, Mac will have found some equally dangerous occupation.  _ And I’m just crazy enough to want to follow him into the jaws of hell all over again.  _

* * *

Robin listens to Jack fill in the details of the mission. He’s not quite as foggy as he was yesterday, but he knows from literal painful experience that he’s going to be on some pretty strong pain medication for a while. Not as long as after Syria, but long enough.

“Unfortunately, General Sahid was a casualty of the operation.” Jack glances briefly at Robin, but says nothing more. “Things went sideways, we did what we had to do to get out.”

“Your superiors will be disappointed,” the colonel says. “But at the end of the day, he’s been taken out of the picture, and that’s what matters to us on the ground.” His smile is one of relief and gratitude. “And thanks to the device you recovered, we intercepted communication Sahid had with his people on the ground in London. MI6 is picking them up as we speak. His last attack will be a failure.” 

“And did you find out who told him we were coming?” Jack asks. 

“Gisburne was one of the contacts in the phone. He confessed to making and selling the devices we’ve been running across, but he had nothing to do with informing Sahid of the raid. He didn’t even know it was happening.” The colonel paces across the room, hands behind his back. “We’re getting nowhere with the sender. The message is timestamped, but the sender’s time zone is listed as being in the Greenwich time zone itself. So it didn’t come from anyone on base, and while we believe it to be a warning, since it was the only one sent during the timeframe, it’s heavily encrypted. Some sort of system with a password that changes every thirty seconds, so trying to crack it is almost impossible.”

The description sends a shock of ice down Rob’s spine, and he pushes himself to a sitting position, fuzziness suddenly gone, ignoring John’s protests. “That’s an MI6 encryption. Only emails sent from an operative themselves would have that kind of protection.” He rubs a hand over his face, he feels more exhausted than ever. “No wonder Sahid escaped two raids. He knew in advance that we were coming.” Robin leans back on the pillow with a sigh.  _ I was really hoping I was wrong about this. But it all added up. And Dalton’s assumption was good, but there’s no way a US Army officer would have known about the two previous raids. And I had the feeling those were all connected. _

It’s nearly a week before medical staff clear him to fly out. John doesn’t leave his bedside that entire time. The thought of vanishing, probably never being able to come back to see the man, is unthinkable. Which is why, when he makes his report to his superiors, he insists that they’ll need John’s assistance to sort through the data recovered from the operation.  _ Without Sahid to interrogate personally, they’re going to be combing his information for months, and it would help to have someone personally familiar with a lot of the details.  _ Hopefully that gives him enough time to establish John as a valuable asset. 

He’s put off taking a promotion for a while now; he’s not an office guy and he’s a lot better at scoping out targets than filling out paperwork. But he knows enough about the offered position to know he’d be responsible for putting together his own task force team.  _ Might be worth taking.  _ He’s never really seen himself as the kind of guy who could lead a team. But if he’s got people in it like John and Marion, he thinks it might be possible. People like them don’t need a leader so much as they just need something to be doing. 

He apologizes to Dalton and Mac for what’s likely the tenth time before he leaves. He still feels guilty about dragging them into a mess that his own agency made. As usual, both of them protest, insisting he doesn’t need to apologize for anything, that ops go sideways, and that at the end of the day, they’re still alive and in one piece, so that’s what matters. 

“It’s not over for me yet.” Rob leans on his cane, he’s going to be using that for a while. “I still need to find the leak in MI6.” 

“Good luck with that,” Dalton says. “Mole hunts are never easy.” 

“At least now we have two big advantages. We know the mole exists, and whoever it is doesn’t know that we do. I know someone who might be able to get a better look at what we’re dealing with here.” 

_ There really are advantages to having someone who isn’t part of the agency.  _ Marion will be able to do plenty of work without risking anyone finding out what she’s up to, and hopefully net them a mole. 

“When it’s all over, you need to fly out to Texas sometime. We still never determined who’s the better shot,” Dalton says, laughing. 

“Someday, I’m going to take you up on that.” He shrugs. “Might be a while though.” 

“You’re just afraid I’m going to prove I’m better. You’re lucky your arm’s in a sling.” 

“Jack…” Mac is rolling his eyes. His fever’s finally broken, but it’s going to be a little longer for him before they let him out of here. Robin can tell the kid’s itching to be gone, his bedside table is absolutely covered with small paperclips twisted into everything from what looks like scope crosshairs to a tiny version of a Chinook helicopter. 

“I hope we work together again someday,” Robin says. He’s pretty sure Angus MacGyver isn’t going to ever have a job anyone could call normal.  _ Neither am I. _

“Me too,” Mac says. “Thanks for saving my life back there.” 

“Well, I’m leaving now, so try and stay out of trouble, okay?” He smiles. “But it looks like you’ve got someone pretty good watching your back anyway.”  _ Dalton would probably be the last to admit it, but I’m pretty sure he’s basically officially adopted his EOD tech at this point. _

“Here,” Mac hands him one of the wire sculptures. “Something to remember us by.”  _ Like I could forget the kid who blew up a door with stuff he found in a supply closet… _ Robin grins and takes the small wire, tucking it in his shirt pocket. 

“Take care of yourself out there, kid.” And then John is at the door, with the wheelchair they’re insisting he has to leave in, and it’s time to go. 

It feels good to be boarding the plane that’s going to take him home. It feels better to be doing it with John beside him.  _ He saved all of our lives, back there. I can use someone like him watching my back.  _ But more than that, they became family. And Robin’s going to do whatever he has to to make sure that neither of them have to lose their family again. He’s not sure what’s coming, for any of them, but for the first time in a long time, he thinks there might be a good reason to stop working alone. 

He pulls the twisted wire out of his pocket and smiles. MacGyver’s turned a paperclip into the shape of an arrow. 


End file.
